In A Pickle
by BadKatPat
Summary: Harry has learned the hard way not to drink and charm. Just a fun little story written for a LJ prompt. H/D, implied relationship, humour, so G it hurts but rated T just because of their relationship.


In A Pickle

It wasn't that Harry Potter didn't like pickles, in fact, he absolutely adored them. He always had, adored them that is. It was the one food that Dudley didn't devour without a single thought. That meant that Harry always had something to eat, even if it was leavings.

Except right now. He didn't like them at all. Not one little bit. Especially since he was inside one. How he'd gotten there, he wasn't exactly sure. He'd only been trying to open a jar of home-made pickles from Mrs. Weasley. It probably didn't help that he'd been out drinking with his boyfriend earlier in the evening and was the tiniest bit pissed. He'd twisted and turned and tugged on the lid, trying to get the damn thing open, but alas and alack, nothing, nada - it wouldn't budge an inch.

Whatever had possessed him to pull out his wand and try to open it magically, he couldn't say. But he could say that right now, he was in a pickle...literally.

It wasn't completely horrible, just a bit squishy and dark. But there was air to breathe after he'd managed to poke a couple of holes to the outside with his wand and that was enough for right now even if it was strongly scented of dill and spice.

He pulled out his wand and cast the first of many spells; first attempting to crack it open so that he could simply step out and Apparate home with none the wiser, except the owner of a broken pickle, who would have to contend with a huge mess. Then, he tried to Apparate directly out of the pickle. That didn't work either and it only made the guts of the pickle just a bit more mushy. Lastly, he tried every variation of Alohomora trying to get the blasted thing to just open up.

Harry sighed, and tucked his wand back in his pocket. He'd even tried to slice the pickle open with his wand, but apparently the pickle was only going to allow him only to breathe, but not escape. He figured he had two options left, eat his way out of the damn thing or wait until it rotted. Neither option sounded very good right now, especially with a full stomach of pub food and booze.

Then he heard it. Or more aptly a her.

"I know I saw some Bundimuns out here", the voice said faintly. He heard the swish of something metallic and then the voice seemed to be on top of him. "Oh my!" the voice exclaimed. "Daddy will be so pleased when he arrives! My special cucumber seeds are growing so large!" The voice sounded somewhat amazed and ecstatic. A thump echoed inside the pickle.

"You're almost ready to pick, my already pickled pickle!" the voice exclaimed happily.

"Hey!" Harry hollered from inside the pickle. "Hey! I'm stuck inside here."

"You can talk? Oh my stars and bars!" The voice said excitedly. "I've always wanted to talk to a pickle!" The voice reminded him of someone, but he couldn't place it just yet.

"Please! Anyone... it's me Harry Potter and I'm trapped inside this pickle!" Harry shouted, trying to force the words through one of his tiny air holes.

"Harry?" You're a pickle now?" the voice asked. And then Harry realized where he was and who was with him. He was on Luna's pickle farm in Southern France. Oh Merlin, he was doomed.

"No, Luna, I'm not a pickle," Harry yelled, feeling a bit dizzy from the dill fumes inside the massive gherkin he was inhabiting.

"Oh, you're a cornichon, then. How lovely!"

"Luna," Harry yelled, trying to sound disgusted, but failing miserably, because it is quite difficult to articulate well inside a pickle. "Get Draco... Draco Malfoy!"

"Oooh... what a wonderful idea! We could have tea and sandwiches," Luna said, but through the tiny hole, her voice sounded the tiniest bit sad. "But, I'd have to dice you up for the egg salad sandwiches."

"Luna!"

"Oh Harry, I was just teasing," Luna replied with a giggle. Inside the gigantic cucumber, Harry rolled his eyes. He pressed his eye to the tiny hole trying to see Luna better and jerked back, getting a cascade of cucumber seeds down his back.

Luna's eye was pressed to the tiny hole.

"Are you sure you aren't just a pickle funning me?" She asked quite seriously.

"Luna, please. It's me Harry and I'm stuck inside your cucumber!" Harry cried, feeling dizzier each time he took a deep breath to yell.

"No, Harry, you're stuck inside my already pickled pickle," Luna replied, quite seriously.

Harry waited, and didn't reply. He didn't want to risk fainting and having Luna forget that he was inside her already pickled pickle. Now she had him calling it that. It had to be the fumes... it just had to be...

A thump reverberated through the pickle. "Harry, don't worry. I'll send Draco an owl. We'll get you out of there, and if not, then we'll use this one for tuna fish salad."

He heard her singing faintly in the distance. He had serious concerns about Luna. Sure, she'd been a bit ditzy in school, but ever since she moved to France and started growing pickles for a living, she'd just gone off the charts. For just one moment, he wondered if she was smoked gillyweed.

Harry settled back into the his cushion of cucumber and tried to relax. He closed his eyes and thought about the one person who could help him; his lover, a beautiful blond Charms and Potions Master named Draco Malfoy.

He could see him so clearly in his mind, eyes the color of storm clouds, hair the color of winter frost, and his body, something any middle-aged Muggle woman and gay man would given their eyeteeth to touch. Harry licked his lips and sighed. It wouldn't do to get aroused. There was barely enough room to move as it was and trying to wank inside a pickle would probably be the worst thing he could do at the moment.

Instead, Harry tried to remember the spell that had gotten him trapped. The damn dill and spice fumes made thinking hard, not to mention that his buzz was starting to wear off and he was getting a monster of a headache, and if he had a headache, Draco would probably be dying about now. It had started as just a lovely evening of drinking and eating and just enjoying each other's company and then that old competitive streak between them had emerged. Harry couldn't remember how many pints of ale he'd put away and he was pretty sure Draco hadn't been able to count after the first twelve.

It was the last time he'd drink and charm, Merlin help him.

As he lay there, wanting desperately to doze off to keep from dying from boredom, it hit him. He had to pee. Not just pee and oh-my-God-I-feel-so-much-better, but pee like ten longshoremen who'd drank the tavern dry.

He could feel his eyes turning yellow.

Harry pulled out his wand and desperately cast a spell to crack the cucumber open one more time. Instead, the spell caused a gob of cucumber flesh to explode and hit him chest, almost knocking the piss out of him.

There was only one thing to do. Harry carefully drilled a hole through the cucumber down and to the left of him. What he had to do would never be spoken of ever, and especially not to Draco.

EEE

Draco Malfoy awoke to a thundering noise coming from outside his bedroom window. He blearily opened one eye, daring the world or his mother (if she knew) to say one thing about going out drinking with his hollow-legged boyfriend.

The thundering started again with a loud staccato burst. He angrily opened his other eye and saw a large brown owl tapping at his window. It's large orange eyes peered in at him expectantly as if to say, "Hurry up... I have places to fly, people to see and voles to kill."

The owl pecked at the window one more time then let out a loud ooh-hu before it started to preen itself.

Draco buried his head under his pillow. Apparently, a troll was happily thumping his brain inside his skull. Hangovers had a tendency to do that to a person. Oh, but what a night! Draco smiled to himself.

"Ooooh-huuuu" the orange-eyed owl called, louder and much more insistently. Then the bloody tapping started again.

"Go away!" Draco shouted and then instantly regretted it. Merlin, his head hurt, and being the best boyfriend ever, he'd given his last bottle of hangover potion to Harry.

The tapping continued and before long, Draco was afraid that the owl would break the glass in his window.

And then he could hex it. He smirked and reached for his wand.

Instead he did the responsible thing, the right thing, the thing that he really did not feel like doing; charm the window to open.

The huge brown owl flew in and perched itself on the end of his bed. It stretched its long wings and smoothed a ruffled feather with its beak before presenting its leg to Draco.

A pink and green sheet of paper was fastened neatly around the owl's leg.

Draco glanced up at the owl's face and was rewarded with a piercing glare that seemed to say, 'take the blasted note and hurry up about it!'

The owl shook his leg at Draco impatiently.

Carefully, Draco unfastened the note from the owl's leg, sneaking peaks at the owl's long, sharp beak.

Draco unrolled the note. A sharp ooooh-huuu broke his concentration. The owl was glaring at him.

"Oh, right. Sorry," Draco murmured, and conjured up a few owl treats from his study. The tasty bits floated across the room and the owl snapped them up as they floated past. With a heavy flap of its wings, the owl flew out the window and perched on the balcony railing. At least whoever had trained this owl, had trained it well.

Draco turned his attention back to the note. He read the words and his eyebrow involuntarily arched. The flowery script flowed across the page and seemed to sparkle.

"Harry Potter is in a pickle on my farm," it read. Draco squinted at the words. Harry? He should be home fast asleep with no worries of waking up to the hangover of the century.

"He asked me to write to you to ask you to come free him. I told him that if you didn't come, I would use the pickle he is currently in for tuna salad. So, you see, Draco Malfoy , Harry Potter needs you."

Draco snorted and began to fold the letter up. Luna had to be pranking him. There was no way Harry could be inside a pickle. He turned the paper over in his hands and he saw something written on the outside. "I'm not funning you, even though at first I thought it was my pickled pickle talking to me. Harry Potter is inside one of my pickled pickles. Harry was a bit testy last I spoke to him and I'm afraid he's going to start gnawing on my gherkin."

Draco scrunched up his lip in the most satisfied smirk. He had been on the other end of one of Harry's pickled flavoured kisses before and if he was truly "inside" one of Luna's pickles, then this was just too good to pass up. Luna was a bit of a dingbat, but she never kidded when it came to Harry. He'd always wondered if she had a bit of a thing for him. That was until she had hooked up with Laney Fitzsimons, a very curvy, hot yoga instructor.

Draco got up and went to his wardrobe and began to dress. It was a bit chilly in France so he needed to dress warmly.

EEE

Luna's shouting brought Harry out of his dill and spice fumed fog. He heard her before her could see her through his tiny little spy hole in his pickle. A couple of thumps awakened him a bit more.

"Harry? Draco is coming! He's on his way across the fields right now. He insisted I show him my midgie and bread and butter pickle fields first. Oh, Harry, he is so lovely. No wonder you hooked up with him," Luna gushed.

Harry could just make out her neon green socks through his spy hole. "Thanks, Luna!" Harry shouted back.

Two small raps was his answer.

Harry pulled out his wand and managed to bore the spy hole just a smidge bigger and then he pressed his eye back against the inside of the pickle.

Draco was making his way across the field, his black Snape-cape billowing behind him as he strode quickly through the fields, occasionally slipping as he probably slipped on a squished cucumber.

He had missed that Snape-cape.

"My God, Luna," Draco drawled, as he stopped before Harry's pickled pickle. "That is one enormous pickle! How ever did you get it so big?"

"I do have a special fertilizer mix that I use that contains dragon dung that Charlie Weasley ships out of Romania. They have the best."

Harry saw Draco glance at his boots surreptitiously.

Draco loved his Armani boots. But, Harry would definitely buy him two more pairs if he would just get him out of this pickle he was in.

"Draco! Draco!" Harry shouted and rocked the pickle just a bit for emphasis. He stuck his finger through the hole in the pickle and wiggled it.

Draco sank down on his haunches and studied the finger waggling in front of him. "Do I even want to know how in Merlin's name you got in there?"

"No," Harry replied miserably, his eye pressed to the hole again.

Draco flicked his wand and Harry could hear him much clearer now.

"You know, pickle green doesn't go with your eyes at all, Harry," Draco said, conversationally, as he studied the massive pickle before him.

"Draco," Harry said in the most piteous voice he could conjure up, "please get me out of here."

"So, Harry, tell me, were you having some sort of perverted dream about pickles before you got pickled?" Draco asked.

"My great-auntie Pharisha did that once with a squash. She dreamed about a squash canoe and woke up in one floating in the creek behind her house," Luna said helpfully.

"Did she now? Gooseneck or more of the zucchini sort?"

"Gooseneck, I think," Luna replied.

"Draco, come on now... get me out of here!" Harry pleaded.

"In due time, Harry, due time. I need to ask you some questions so I can determine the sort of charm that got you stuck in there," Draco said.

Harry could see him trying not to smile.

"Anything. Just get me out of here," Harry replied. He wiped a mustard seed off his nose. He had to give Luna one thing. She was quite detail oriented in her pickle making.

"If Pickled Potter picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers would a pickled Potter pick?"

"Draco.."

"There once was a man in a pickle, who his boyfriend loved to tickle.."

"Dammit, Draco, get me out of this bloody thing!" Harry yelled.

"All right, all right," Draco said, fighting not to laugh. "But this isn't the end of it."

Harry knew it wasn't. He would get teased about this until the end of time, or until Draco had something else to take the mickey out on him.

"Pass your wand out of the hole you had your finger out of earlier," Draco ordered.

Harry fumbled for his wand. He felt a bit slimy and honestly, a bit pruny.

"You know that wood stick thing and not the other," Draco said.

He could hear Luna laughing somewhere off in the pickle patch.

"I don't know, Draco. It's the only thing I have in here to make air holes," Harry said.

"Trust me, Harry. I'll won't let you suffocate. Although, you have to admit the headline, 'Pickled Potter Passes', would gander a look or two."

Harry passed the wand through the hole, feeling like this was his only hope of getting out.

Draco tugged the wand through the last bit of the pickle. He wrinkled his nose at the strong smell of dill, onion, and mustard seed coming off of it.

"Prior Incantanto," Draco murmured, as he passed his hand over Harry's wand. He gave it a shake and continued, backing up to the spell he was looking for. "Prior Incantanto," he said more forcefully, entreating the wand to give up the spell that put Harry in the mess he was in.

"Hmmm," Draco hummed thoughtfully. "You certainly buggered yourself this time, Potter."

"Can you get me out? Or am I stuck until it rots?" Harry asked, worriedly.

"I think I can get you out, but what's it worth to you?" Draco asked, smirking.

"Anything. Seriously anything you want that I have, you've got it," Harry replied.

"Uh-huh. We'll see about that then."

"So? What are you waiting for?" Harry asked, impatiently. It had gone long past amusing being stuck inside this giant cucumber.

"Pickle Pesternomi," Draco said, pointing his and Harry's wand at the gigantic gherkin.

It immediately froze and cracked open to reveal, a very disheveled and squinting Harry Potter.

"Oh my God, Draco," Harry cried and flung himself at Draco.

"Ugh, Potter, you stink," Draco said, his nose wrinkled and held out his hand to keep Harry away. He cast a quick charm to freshen Harry up.

Immediately, Harry threw his arms around Draco. "I didn't think I'd ever escape that... that thing." Harry sputtered, burying his face in Draco's throat and hair. He shivered in Draco's warm embrace.

Draco drew his long, black cape up around Harry, encasing them.

"I even missed your Snape-cape," Harry whispered, hugging Draco even tighter.

"I have plans for the Snape-cape tonight. You game?" Draco said with a smirk and a quick kiss to Harry's hair.

Harry snuggled in even closer, and breathed in the fresh, clean scent of his lover and nodded.

Draco lifted Harry's face by the chin, flicked away a stray mustard seed, and then kissed him.


End file.
